


fireglow

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canadian Shack, Choking, D/s elements, Deep Throating, Dream Pack (Raven Cycle), Future Fic, Getting Back Together, Holidays, Introspection, Joseph Kavinsky Lives, M/M, Prokopenko (Raven Cycle) Lives, Sharing a Bed, Shower Sex, Snowed In, So Much Catholic Guilt, Sorta kinda, and tbh not trc compliant with the whole k lives thing, not cdth compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28256985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Thereisa guest cabin,” Swan suddenly said, as if the thought had not occurred to him yet.“Oh, yeah, the guest cabin.” Prokopenko replied, not looking up from his Harlequin.“Might give you some privacy.” Skov supplied with a wink.(AKA, the Jiang/Declan snowed-in forced-proximity getting-back-together ridiculous fic WITH FEELINGS and MULTIPLE CHAPTERS you didn't know you needed this holiday season, but do.)
Relationships: Jiang/Declan Lynch, Minor or Background Relationship(s), background poly dreampack
Comments: 34
Kudos: 64





	1. part one (the set-up)

**Author's Note:**

> It's all @glitterghost's fault. 
> 
> Title from a 1970s Harlequin I stole from my grandma, cut lyrics from Fleet Foxes throughout.

_ i was following the pack _

_ all swallowed in their coats _

_ *** _

“This is...” Declan wanted to sigh. He wanted to sigh, except he was Declan Lynch, and he did not sigh. Sighing was for mortal men. Declan was a mortal man, but he would rather die than admit that, especially to Joseph Kavinsky, of all demons or men.

“C’mon, Lynch,” K grinned. “I got the goods, don’t I?” And yes, he did, he had a delightful box that could turn grass into  _ grass, _ Declan was going to make  _ so much money _ off of it, even after doling out K’s cut to him, but  _ fuck. _

Another man might’ve complained that it was Christmas, that he had better places to be, but that was a lie and Declan did not even attempt to shape the falsehood with his father’s lips. Another man might’ve left out of there anyway, damn the road conditions, reckless as a saint. Declan had not gotten to the ripe-old age of twenty eight by being reckless, though. He was not Ronan, beloved by God enough that he could careen through streets and do strange drugs in fields and drop out of high school with no real repercussions. Declan was Declan, and there was nothing but practicality in him. He could afford nothing else.

Declan only suppressed his sigh and arched a brow at Kavinsky, silently acquiescing to the whole  _ situation _ that had developed.

(Namely: being called up by Kavinsky, crowing drunkenly about  _ a Christmas present for you, boo. _ Driving up to Kavinsky’s rented chalet in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve. Dealing with Kavinsky, and then being confronted with the fact that he had been snowed in within the space of three hours. Being invited to bunk down.)

The whole pack of them were there: Prokopenko, Skov, Swan, and... Jiang.

Declan had only seen Jiang out of the corner of his eye, but the man was as stoically handsome as ever. As beautiful as ever. Beetle-black eyes and jet-black hair and gold accoutrements, dressed all in black, heedless of the dress code that his comrades had evidently decided upon, in their brightly-patterned sweaters and wool socks and sweatpants. Jiang was tall and leonine in his crisply-tailored black turtleneck and trousers, unaffected by the holiday cheer.

Declan was as affected by Jiang as he had ever been, even when they were still back in Henrietta, getting his throat stretched out by the boy he couldn’t admit he was in love with to try and forget how afraid he was, all the time.

Kavinsky knew. Declan didn’t even have to fucking look at him to know that he knew. There were no secrets among this set, the same way as there was no secrets between Ronan and his Scooby gang.

Declan was so fucking  _ sick _ of being around groups of dangerously co-dependent young people. He was so fucking sick of seeing the intimacy they shared and not being able to even come close to breeching it.

“Eggnog?” Skov offered as he passed on his way to the punch bowl full of the stuff. It smelled so strongly of liquor that Declan could’ve mistaken it for a bowl of whipped paint thinner. Still.

“Why not?” He shrugged, pretending again that he was fine. He was back at Aglionby for the night, rubbing elbows with young princes of the business world, however unseemly. Only the aches he felt keenly in his back and knees belied this lie. He accepted the cup and ignored the lascivious way that Skov managed to stroke his palm during the pass-off.

Prokopenko was settled in by the fire when they adjourned from the kitchen to the main room, reading glasses on, bent intently over a creased paperback novel whose cover depicted a hairy-chested man and wild-haired woman locked in a torrid embrace. He glanced up at Declan and then snickered meanly, poking the inside of his cheek with his tongue while waggling his eyebrows as if that were to mean something.

Swan was lounging on the couch, Skov on the floor beside him, whispering. Just snatches of inaudibilities that set Declan’s teeth on edge.

Kavinsky slunk around like a prowling cat. Declan decided he’d have to find a corner and sit in it for the night, keeping himself alert.

“There is a guest cabin,” Swan suddenly said, as if the thought had not occurred to him yet.

“Oh, yeah, the guest cabin.” Prokopenko said, not looking up from his Harlequin.

“Might give you some privacy.” Skov supplied with a wink.

“Might give  _ us _ some privacy.” Kavinsky leered, suddenly too close to his back. “Santa Claus is coming tonight.” There could be no mistaking his meaning. Declan wanted to grimace.

Again, though- mortality, and the performance of it.

“Sounds great.” He managed. “I’ll stay there, tonight.”

***

_and michael, you would fall_

_and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime._


	2. part two (the flashback)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of feelings that I feel.

_ i’m not one  _

_ to ever pray for mercy.  _

_ *** _

“There’s nothing else but this,” Declan whispered, uncharacteristically poetic, unwisely raw, but that was okay, because he was dreaming. 

Unlike his father, his brother, the countless others who meandered through his life and meant nothing to him beyond what he could get them to write checks for, Declan did not dream in fantastic unrealities. Declan dreamt in regrets and eventualities. 

Lately, all he dreamt of was Jiang Hu. 

Declan Lynch was nineteen, melodramatic, too-hard around the eyes for his tender years, feeling like a walking inevitability. A statistic. He’d die before his fortieth birthday, or else outlive his usefulness at a hundred and four, surrounded by impersonal healthcare staffers just waiting for their shift to end. 

He felt like that a lot- like he was just hanging around, waiting for his shift to end. No matter that his job was never-ending. Declan’s job came down from on high- from his father, the closest thing to a god that Declan could ever imagine, because he had spawned a force like Ronan, who was an archangel falling in perpetuum. 

_ Take care of your brother. Keep the secret. Keep all of the secrets.  _

Sometimes, Declan could not remember his father ever saying his name. 

Others, it was all he could hear:  _ Declan! Declan! Declan!  _ ringing like nevermore in his ears, deafening, defeating. 

He loved too much. He loved all-consumingly. 

This was the problem, though to others it may have been a solution. Declan was not so deluded as to believe this. 

There was Niall, who Declan loved enough to allow himself to be shackled to a rock and sacrificed to a sea monster named  _ duty.  _

There was Aurora, who Declan loved helplessly and hated endlessly, because she was a two-dimensional  _ thing  _ that could not  _ understand.  _ She was doe-eyed and beautiful and charming, but she was an extension of Niall, who for all his imagination could not fathom that his wife might need to be something more than a fairytale. 

There was Matthew, who Declan wanted to protect from  _ everything.  _ Declan wanted to send Matthew far, far away and never see him again, to shield him from what it was to be a Lynch. Even a dreamt-up Lynch did not last long in this new world, broken-open by the crack of a gunshot on a chilly morning. 

There was  _ Ronan,  _ who Declan could just  _ not-  _

And there was Jiang, now, added to that short list of people who Declan could stand and who Declan loved, a Venn diagram turned into one single ring of  _ regret.  _

He woke up alone, because there was no room for sentiment when you were a Lynch in Henrietta with a gun in your dresser drawer. 

He loved Jiang without any real rhyme or reason, something that his mother probably would’ve attributed to his Irish heritage in a laughing mockingbird voice, had he ever had the opportunity to tell her. 

At first it was only physical: Declan was not particularly picky about gender, when it came to his sexual activity. He had come up through puberty spending nine months out of twelve in an all-boys dormitory in the middle of fucking nowhere, spending the other three in a farmhouse with his family in the  _ outskirts  _ of fucking nowhere. He got it where he got it, and he got it only to slake the needs of his body. The same as he took his vitamins and put in hours in the gym, Declan fucked to keep everything working well enough that he could get accomplished whatever needed doing for the good of his education, his family, his future. 

As he got older he acquired a string of short-term girlfriends; still, practicality pointed out that girls could be accidentally impregnated, and Declan was not planning on ever paying any sort of child or spousal support, diverting his attention in any way from the family he already had. The world did not need more Lynches. 

So he dated, but he still fucked his classmates, his dorm mates, his gym buddies. 

This was all well and good, until he found himself beguiled. Taken unawares. Fucked up against the hood of a flashy sports car with his trousers still around his knees, tasting wax polish and  _ sobbing  _ with it. There had never been anything-  _ anyone.  _ There had never been, and Declan was undone from the start. 

The problem with leading a life of self-denial was that it led to a predisposition for addiction, and Declan found himself hooked far too quickly for his own good. 

There were his family and then there was  _ Jiang,  _ and Declan was  _ fucked  _ from the very beginning, in more ways than one. 

“You were talking in your sleep again.” Jiang would probably say if he were there, pressing a plush kiss to the knob of his shoulder socket, dark eyes watchful, endless pools of ink. Fathomless. Declan would shrug, those lips still pressed to his skin, just to feel the firm press of Jiang’s teeth there. 

He imagined it, waking up with the other side of his bed warm and his heart full of something besides dread.

A dream for a different sort of man. 

***

_ and i wonder what became of them  _

_ what became of them. _


	3. part three (the guest cabin)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's tricky,  
> tricky,  
> tricky,  
> tricky

_ there is no time for hesitation  _

_ you come or go.  _

_ *** _

The trek to the guest cabin from the main house was a short one, but the cold swirled around Declan’s body in a mix of ice and snow, damnable snow, making each step feel like a hundred. He supposed some might call it  _ picturesque,  _ this blustery night in the northeast with only the stars and the moon above to cast silvery-pale light on the white plains all around. Declan only saw death. 

That was what winter was to him, still a farm boy at heart who had grown up shoveling shit alongside his brothers, sticking his hands up laboring animals’ orifices to ease the way for new life, repairing fences, baling hay. 

He preferred summer, spring, fall, even now with the Barns only a twice-yearly sort of retreat for him and most of his life spent indoors somewhere or another. He preferred the scent of the green rolling hills, the sense memory of coarse wool under his hands as he helped herd the new lambs, the reassurance that comes from being reminded that the world was  _ living.  _ That he was  _ awake.  _

There was nothing like it; in his dreams of regretting, Declan had visions of himself if his father had never died, if he was still able to go to the Barns and sleep in his childhood bed without drinking a glassful of whiskey to avoid the ghosts, if he could wake up in the morning and put on his gum boots to head out into the fields to work before the sun rose too high in the sky. 

The walk took too-long, was the point, and he was already  _ off  _ by the time he came in the door, stamping his feet on the rug to get them cleared off, shucking his frozen-solid coat so he could heel off his shoes and dive for the crackling fire. 

His mind was far away and sluggish; he should’ve known that the merrily-crackling fire was a  _ clue,  _ but he was content to squat down before it and let it toast his hands, his cheeks, the insides of his thighs where they spread wide as he perched on the balls of his feet. Nothing registered but the  _ pleasure  _ of it, shutting his eyes and  _ smiling  _ because he was alone and could let himself be a man, not a marble-hewn barricade.  _ Declan,  _ not  _ the only thing standing between Ronan and extinction.  _

Jiang’s gasp was bitten-off but audible, and Declan tensed so hard he nearly tumbled into the fireplace, catching himself on his hands even as he scrambled to his feet. In his socks he was still taller than Jiang. It didn’t make him feel any better. 

Jiang was wearing a towel, wrapped low around his hips, and a gold crucifix. 

Declan was caught on that— Christ in sharp, gruesome detail between Jiang’s pecs, glinting in the flickering firelight. 

It was a terrible piece of jewelry; Niall had given it to Declan on the occasion of his first communion. In ensuing years, Ronan and Matthew had received plain crosses, no groaning Savior, no gory wounds. Declan had given it to Jiang sometime after he’d fallen hopelessly in love with him, a  _ fuck you  _ to his dead dad and a pledge to the boy he knew even then he’d never have. 

“You’re not—“ Declan cut himself off, his tone too-affected. Damn Kavinsky. Damn him and his fucking lapdogs. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “I thought I was alone.” 

Jiang arched an eyebrow.  _ Clearly,  _ that look said. Jiang knew him better than anyone, even after all this (agonizing) time apart. This was how he operated— waiting. His silence spoke more than speeches from anyone else. And when he spoke—  _ fuck.  _

Declan was shivering. 

Jiang strode forward, until he could curve one elegant hand around Declan’s fire-hot cheek. “Let’s get you warmed up, Dec.” He said, simply, but those sharp eyes said multitudes, soliloquies of  _ filth  _ that Declan still thought about every time he was touching himself in the dark. He was taller and broader than Jiang, but there was no mistaking the  _ weakness  _ in him as he swayed forward, trying simultaneously to nuzzle into that gentle hand and press their lips together. 

Ten years, almost, and Declan felt the want as keenly as if it were yesterday. 

Jiang didn’t let him lean in— the hand curved around his cheek fisted whip-quick into his curls, pulling sharply with one of those  _ looks  _ that had Declan going into that low-down place where he could almost,  _ almost  _ understand why Ronan and Niall both were the way they were. It was simpler, under Jiang’s touch.  _ Everything  _ made more sense. 

“C’mon, Lynch,” Jiang whispered, something smoky and pleased in each word, like he delighted in Declan’s attempted impertinence. “You know better than that.” 

Declan nodded to feel the sting from his scalp, shivering again. All this muscle, all this power, and here he was, weak as a fucking  _ kitten.  _ Unburdened. 

“Shower.” Jiang told him, and with one last tug released his hold on Declan’s hair, nodding back toward the short hallway he’d come from. 

Declan would’ve preferred, if he were in any other situation with any other person, falling to his knees right there, showing off with his wide mouth and his nimble fingers. Exercising control with single-minded determination and a dash of ruthlessness. 

_ You know better than that,  _ Jiang had said, though. And Declan did. 

He went down the hallway. 

_ *** _

_ keep all my promises to break them  _

_ i am no innocent son.  _


	4. part four (oasis)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The shower scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ?

_ green apples hang from my tree _

_ they belong only to me. _

_ *** _

Jiang opened the bathroom door with a flourish, then shoved Declan inside with the  _ suggestion  _ of a push to the space between his pectorals, palm-to-sternum, a touch that made Declan stumble with how it made him feel. Like he’d been waiting years to be touched  _ exactly  _ the way Jiang was touching him, now. 

(He had. He’d been waiting. He’d been living but he’d been holding his breath, fucking other people for maintenance, touching himself languidly to memories of Jiang, Jiang,  _ Jiang.)  _

“There’s nothing-” he started to murmur, like in a dream, like sleepwalking, like everything he’d never allowed himself, before. Jiang smiled razor-sharp, pressed their mouths together to silence him. He touched Declan  _ slowly,  _ like he had all the time in the world. Like there was nowhere he’d rather be but here, undressing Declan in this close, tile-lined room still heavy with steam from his own shower. 

Like he didn’t wish he was up at the main house, the  _ chalet,  _ in a tangle of five sets of limbs, cocks, mouths,  _ teeth.  _

Declan was undone. He was weak in the knees. He’d do anything, now. Let Jiang  _ ruin  _ him, just for more of this, these fresh memories he was hazily trying to catalog with all the intensity of a monk transcribing millenia-old religious texts in a monastery by the sea. 

Jiang held him in the palms of his fine-boned hands, maneuvered him into the suddenly-running shower like a time jump, kept kissing him under the spray so hot that Declan grunted in surprise, low in his throat. His skin burned with it, the chill from his trek catching up with him again as he started to shiver so violently his teeth chattered together. Jiang tucked his face into Declan’s neck, listening to the sound of enamel-on-enamel like it was some great symphony. 

“Dec,” he hummed, secret, against trembling, soaked skin. His crucifix was a sharp point between their chests. That  _ crucifix,  _ that reminder of his father’s expectations turned into a lavalier for the torch-bearer in all Declan’s fantasies. “Declan.” The way he said the word erased everything else.  _ Everyone  _ else. 

“Nothing else but this.” Declan finally was able to say, mindless, somehow backed up against the shower wall, blind because his eyes were closed, eyelashes wet and spiky. Deafened by the roar of the water and the rush of blood pounding in his ears. 

“Nothing but us.” Jiang agreed, and pressed down on Declan’s shoulders so gently. The floor was hard on Declan’s knees, ten years older than the last time he’d done this, but he remembered the play well enough, Jiang’s hand cradling the back of his head so he was cushioned from the bruising yield of the wall behind him, his own hands curled around the backs of Jiang’s thighs. Jiang in his  _ throat,  _ with nowhere to go. Stuck between a wall and a hard place. 

God, he felt so full. 

Jiang fucked his throat leisurely, without pause or hesitation, like his trust in Declan was so implicit that he knew,  _ knew,  _ Declan wouldn’t disappoint him, here, like this. Declan would open, open, be so good for him. That was all Declan wanted- all he  _ had  _ wanted, the only thing he’d ever wanted only for himself, and not for his brothers or his father or his  _ fucking  _ last name. 

All he wanted was to be this, trusted and cared for, full-up of the physical evidence of it, Jiang,  _ Jiang.  _

All he wanted was Jiang. 

Declan groaned, felt Jiang’s thrusts go sloppier, more uneven. He looked up, despite the water dripping into his eyes, and saw nothing but  _ black,  _ the intensity in Jiang’s eyes as he was staring down, careful even in his disarray. Under his hands, Jiang’s thigh muscles tensed once, twice, three times before he was groaning long and low, coming so far down Declan’s throat he couldn’t taste even a trace. 

Neither of them moved. Declan closed his eyes, content to stay here with Jiang softening in his throat even with his knees aching, harder than he’d been in so long it felt like an eternity.  _ There is nothing else but this.  _

***

_ in the ocean, _

_ washing off my name from your throat.  _


	5. part five (asleep)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's all be very sad together.

_ i remember how  _

_ they took you down _

_ *** _

Declan woke with the winter sun on his face, streaming in through the window at the head of the bed. Jiang was wrapped around him from behind, snoring softly into his neck. They were both still bare-skinned from the night before. Declan’s throat  _ ached  _ in the best way. 

He didn’t move for a long couple of minutes, just savoring the heat and the weight of Jiang’s sleeping body the way he’d never got to, back at Aglionby. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Jiang asleep, actually. Declan hadn’t been exactly in a position for  _ sleepovers,  _ back then. Not with hitmen and dreamcatchers always watching, waiting. Thinking that maybe  _ he  _ had inherited his father’s gift, not just his face, hair, eyes, and temper. None of them had thought much of Ronan, the second-born son, and Declan was thankful for it. He prayed his knees bruised each night that it would remain a carefully-concealed truth, Ronan’s  _ inheritance.  _

He’d not slept beside anyone since he and Ronan and Matthew were small, piled into each other’s beds, falling asleep like puppies curled together, Declan always the last to fall and the first to wake. Always the watchdog, where Ronan was the wolf, so unaware of his own mortality. Caught in the fragile limbo of possessing fantastical powers and keeping it an absolute secret. 

Niall, with his cascading hills and barns full of the impossible, had been sloppy; Declan would not allow Ronan to make that mistake. Not if he still had breath in his body. 

All he wanted was to stay here, burrow down into the sheets and sprout roots though the mattress, tangling himself up with Jiang until the sun died out for good. Frozen in an embrace like the ruins of Pompeii, two ash-things mixing and becoming one. 

His phone, on the bedside table, was buzzing insistently. A carrier mosquito, bringing the real world back like a sting. 

_ wtf r u,  _ Ronan had sent, and then  _ xmas mass u asshole _

_ r u comin to church bro,  _ from Matthew. 

Christmas Mass. Something they’d done each year, first with their parents and then by themselves, orphans in the pews listening to the condemnation of their sinful ways, their greed and lust and wrath. 

Niall Lynch’s sons were all  _ wrath.  _ Even Matthew, whose temper was like frozen molasses until it bubbled hot enough to burn. They all had it within them, down to the core of their beings. Their marrow. 

Nothing could help that. 

He extricated himself from Jiang, silently crossing the floor to put on his clothes again. He’d have to leave immediately, to make it back in time for the service. The snowstorm had died down in the night, and he was sure he could get the Volvo back to Virginia. He had a spare set of clothes in the trunk- a suit, freshly-pressed, right next to his in-case-of-emergencies shovel. 

(He kept the gun in the glovebox.) 

“Leaving?” Jiang asked from the bed as Declan bent to pull on his wool socks. The sound of his raspy, sleep-laden voice made Declan pause for 1.6 seconds, fingers trembling against his own calf, nails catching on the raspy dark hair there. 

“Yes.” He replied, straightening, not turning back to look at Jiang in the sheets like a mirage, a daydream, a temptation. He thought about offering up an explanation (church, his brothers, his obligations) but it would be nothing Jiang hadn’t heard from him before. 

Declan was always leaving; the excuse he made never mattered more than the action itself. 

Jiang didn’t respond, not even a  _ hmm  _ or a grunt. Declan thought that maybe, as long as he didn’t look back, Jiang had ceased to exist in the warm cocoon of cotton and sunlight behind him. Shrödinger’s lover, or Eurydice, or both. 

God, Declan was tired. 

He looked back, because he could not help himself. Jiang was looking at him, dark eyes flat and mouth making a perfect line of dispassionate apathy. He was a statue, rather than a man, and Declan would’ve preferred for Jiang to beat him, scratch him, hiss at him than for Jiang to be  _ this,  _ stony and accepting. Like he’d known all night that he’d wake up to Declan disappointing him. 

Given past data, Declan could hardly blame him. 

Declan disappointed  _ everyone,  _ including himself. 

“Bye.” He said, and raised a hand for some kind of stupid gesture that no doubt looked as ridiculous as it felt. 

Jiang didn’t move to return the wave, didn’t speak to wish him well or curse him to hell, either way. 

Declan’s phone buzzed again in his pocket. 

He left. 

***

_ the door slammed loud  _

_ and rose up a cloud of dust.  _


	6. part six (the dream)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgive me father, for i keep on sinning, dammit

_hummingbird,_

_just let me die._

***

Ronan knelt gracefully down to pray, penitent bare scalp on savage display; Matthew, on his knees between them, looked like nothing more than a saint, golden curls and restful expression. They were a pair of angels— Michael and Gabriel. 

Declan felt clumsy, like there was not enough room for his mess of a body contained in this place. _He_ was no angel, avenging or otherwise. 

“Loving Father,” he murmured alongside the priest and other churchgoers, alongside his brothers, though Ronan prayed, as ever, in Latin that fell smoothly from his lips like pearls. “Help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of the angels…” 

He did not want to be here, performing this display of false piety. Or- not _false._ Declan believed in hell, and Satan, and by consequence believed in God and angels and heaven. His piety was not false but hollow- Declan believed in heaven, believed in the power of the Blessed Virgin, but he knew in his heart that he would receive no laurels upon the hour of his death. He would go to hell, and so must enjoy the fruits of his soul’s damnation while he was still out of Satan’s clutches to do so.

He did not want to waste his time here, begging for forgiveness when there would be none granted. 

Fuck- he wanted to be on his knees for _Jiang,_ instead, in the cocoon of solitude they’d carved from the guest cabin of Kavinsky’s rented chalet. No doubt they’d be vacating it soon, and then Jiang would be beyond his reach. Not hidden- Declan was never unaware of where Jiang was, with all his resources and his information. To pretend that he had not kept tabs upon the man was folly. 

He knew exactly where Jiang spent his time, jetting between Vancouver and Seoul. Knew where Jiang liked to eat his breakfasts and who his preferred dry cleaner was. 

Declan knew all of these things, and knew that just like before this fever-dream, he would go back to pretending he did not, or at least that he had no way to act upon what he knew.

He would never be satisfied by it; he would never be satisfied by anything or anyone as much as he was by just the smallest touch of Jiang’s skin upon his own. 

He hugged both of his brothers goodbye in the parking lot of the church, Matthew burly and warm beneath his arms, gripping him tight and breathing _love you bro_ into his ears with hot Gatorade-scented breath, Ronan surprised and stiff and _clinging_ for just a sharp ache of a second, silent as the grave. 

It was Christmas, after all. 

Back in his apartment in DC, Declan knelt in the shower so long that the water went lukewarm and his knees went numb on the tiles, half-drowned with his curls sopping wet, hanging into his eyes. He clutched one hand around his own throat hard enough to bruise and curled his other around his cock, gasping raggedly, strangled, spots behind his eyelids. 

It wasn’t the same. It did not feel full and safe, the way Jiang had made him feel, made him _need_ again, upon the surface instead of hiding away, suppressed with the expertise of any Irish Catholic sinner. His birthright was to be disappointment and disconnect. His reward was to be proven right all along, when he finally closed his eyes for the last time and opened them to the rack of Asmodeus. 

Declan was so lonely, so empty, that he could hardly even feel the pleasure of his release, cock softening in his stranglehold and chest stuttering with uneven breaths, head dizzy, blood rushing up to make it ache in a band all around his skull. 

He stumbled on clumsy, numb legs to bed, not even bothering to clean up the water that dripped off of him or to put pajamas on. His sheets were cotton- they’d soak up the moisture. He did not want to do anything but _sleep,_ and forget. 

***

_i do believe_

_you gave it your best try._

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com
> 
> encourage me with comments and kudos and reblogs


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